This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
If "The X-Files' " mythology had been true, Earth today would be inhabited by gray, oval-headed aliens and their human hybrids.
Then again, that's not necessarily the most horrifying prediction we've heard in this country since "The X-Files" last aired a new television episode, May 19, 2002. That was so soon after the 9/11 attacks that names were still being added to the list of people killed in them.
We were all watching for the next attack. Meanwhile, the economy was mediocre, with a few people predicting it would get worse. That one turned out to be right.
Yet America is still here, and the "The X-Files" is back. The return is a great crop circle in our collective corn fields.
"The X-Files" premiered on Fox on Sept. 10, 1993, as the United States was in the middle of that short span between the Cold War and 9/11. About the only thing scaring us was the idea that our computers wouldn't know how to change the date to 2000.
But show creator Chris Carter went and collected the ingredients for a weird, wonderful stew of spooky. There were alien abductions, government conspiracies, faceless rebels, a giant flukeworm, a guy who ate human livers and El Chupacabra, to name just a few spices. The show was garnished with catchphrases to accentuate the flavor:
"The truth is out there."
"I want to believe."
"Fight the future."
"Trust no one."
"The X-Files" accommodated whatever part of us demands to be scared on a regular basis. When it wasn't doing that, Carter and his team were making us laugh.
Three paranoid nerds in a windowless clubhouse was the biggest running gag, but the show had enough one-liners to fill a season of "M*A*S*H."
"There's a little trouble over at our White House," Agent Fox Mulder said in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, "but that'll blow over, so to speak."
It was good fun. Unlike science-fiction shows such as "The Twilight Zone" and "Star Trek," and what we would see later in "Battlestar Galactica," there were few parables in "The X-Files." The deepest thinking we did was, "Why are the rebels faceless, again?"
And, yes: "Are Mulder and Scully going to kiss, or what?"
Meanwhile, in timing that speaks to the irony of "The X-Files," the show was reaching its peak as America seemed to be reaching its. When "The X-Files' " first feature film premiered in 1998, the economic boom of the period was in full bloom. We had peace and prosperity like we haven't known since, at least.
So it was fitting "The X-Files" ended its television run when the good times did. Being scared wasn't as much fun anymore, and neither was "The X-Files."
The final scene of that last episode had Mulder and Scully holding each other on a bed wondering what just happened and what they're going to do next. For a show that rarely bothered with allegories, "The X-Files" captured the American condition in that moment.
The show is back on Fox for six episodes. We'll see what Mulder and Scully investigate this time. However frightening it is, they should be able to look at it and, deadpan, say, "We've seen worse."
America can say the same. Sure, there still are people who would like to hurt us, the stock market has been down lately, and those paranoid nerds were right about a few things when it comes to government surveillance.
Yet I don't think the "The X-Files" would be back if America weren't much better than it was 13 ½ years ago. We're willing to be scared by something that exaggerates our reality again. As Mulder said in the last line of that last scene in that last episode, "Maybe there's hope."
"The X-Files" is giving me a plot twist no one saw coming — optimism.
Nate Carlisle is a Salt Lake Tribune reporter. Every time he sees a sewer pipe, he is worried that a giant flukeworm is inside.
Twitter: @natecarlisle